Reevaluating the Postcolonial City

Abstract

This foreword begins with a survey of the field of postcolonial studies, from its points of departure to its current situation and future directions. We suggest that the field has long sought to problematize borders, particularly those that separate academic disciplines. The foreword also highlights the material consequences of border crossing for people of colour and other ‘Others’, examining Caryl Phillips' case study of the migrant David Oluwale. Oluwale's abhorrent treatment in Leeds necessitates discussion of the burgeoning new current of postcolonial cities research, to which this special issue adds interdisciplinary perspectives. To explore whether or not global and postcolonial cities are actually synonymous, we return to the origins of postcolonial studies to suggest that the postcolonial city has a longer provenance than the global, and retains the double meaning of ‘post’ as signalling both a coming after and a continuation. We go on to argue that the special issue demonstrates that postcolonial cities exclude even as they embrace, and produce both internal and external marginality. The foreword concludes by adumbrating potential problems with the special issue's topic: its neglect of economics in favour of culture, its overlooking of the postcolonial rural, and as terminology not coming from within but without.

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